The Christian College Consortium has brought thirteen Christian colleges together since the early 1970s. The member institutions were selected on the basis of quality of program, commitment to the evangelical, Protestant heritage, and geographical distribution. At this point there are many other Christian colleges in the United States offering programs that are comparable or superior in quality, but the need for the Consortium to maintain a manageable size for consorting, and the history of working together, have been the bases for maintaining the present membership.

     However, the challenges to Christian colleges today are so varied and significant, and the need for institutions to cooperate for a variety of purposes is so real, that each Consortium college is likely to have many institutional relations and even consortia memberships with institutions other than the Consortium. These are encouraged, for the Consortium does not attempt to provide the basis for all of the cooperative relationships that are needed to be effective.

     The Christian College Consortium provides a unique opportunity for presidents and other college officers to meet together on a regular basis with a relatively small group of peers from similar institutions to discuss the most urgent issues facing the evangelical Christian church, American higher education in general, and Christian higher education in particular, and then to determine how individually or corporately we focus on these issues.

     These meetings provide opportunities to share our individual experiences related to these issues, and our ideas for improving the effectiveness of our institutions and the performance of our personnel. The Consortium has focused its attention on the presidents, the spouses of presidents, and the chief academic officers of the member institutions.

     As a result of these discussions some programs have been initiated over the years which have enabled the administrators and/or the faculty of Consortium institutions to work together toward common goals. An endowment designated for this purpose has been raised through the efforts of the Consortium schools with the encouragement of the Pew Charitable Trusts and assistance from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations. The presidents of Consortium institutions serve as the board of directors of the Consortium, and a president has been employed on a part-time basis to staff the Consortium activities.